


Outside the Gridlines

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: A lot of people have commented that this made them cry so be warned, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Gratuitous use of Carly Rae Jepsen references, Idols, M/M, Okay it's only technically a song fic, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Playlist, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 11:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: Jaehyun chances upon a secret playlist that Johnny keeps adding to, and it’s full of songs about longing and love.Little does Jaehyun know: every song is dedicated to him.





	Outside the Gridlines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mellowfellow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellowfellow/gifts).



> This work is unbeta-ed, and was meant to be equal parts indulgent writing exercise and also a gift for Shou and Alleah, who are perpetually jjad. I hope you guys like this!
> 
> I can’t believe I’m making a song-fic in 2019, but I’ve got no regrets here.
> 
> Johnny’s Playlist here: [Chicago](https://open.spotify.com/user/12140186236/playlist/5D15sqnoqb0PhvttatHTjN?si=XWVLC_w5SmSdH0pfICB2hQ)

Jaehyun was never meant to see it. 

Johnny kept a lock on his phone for the express reason of not wanting Jaehyun to see it. 

It was his best kept secret, the saddest little thing that he kept to himself whenever he’d fiddle around on his phone and pull up a new song. 

Johnny thought he was being really careful about it, too, naming the playlist something cryptic, nothing at all related to Jaehyun’s name. He just named it “Chicago”, so if anyone ever stumbled upon it, they would just think that he was feeling sad about missing home. 

But then he started adding in Daughter and then it just went to hell from there. 

Specifically, it started going to hell when Jaehyun had walked into Johnny and Taeyong’s room while Johnny had had his head hanging off the side of his bed, blasting Daughter’s ‘Youth’, while he had been thinking about Jaehyun laughing at his joke earlier, and crying a little.

Even more specifically, he had walked in on Johnny singing, quite loudly and off key, because of his tears, “And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one, cause most of us are bitter over someone, setting fire to our insides for fun”. 

It was too late. Jaehyun had heard it.

“Dude, what is up with you?” Jaehyun had asked, actual concern lacing his voice as he walked up to Johnny who was still staring at him upside down. “Who broke your heart?”

Johnny sat up too quickly, nearly braining himself on the ceiling, wiping his snot away. You, he thought.

That’s also when Johnny remembered that he had left his phone charging on the station next to the speakers, and that it was unlocked. 

So things happened like this: Jaehyun was walking over to the speakers, and his natural curiosity meant that he was gonna scroll through the playlist, which would have been fine, if only Johnny hadn’t included all that sad Paramore, and ‘Stolen’ by Dashboard Confessional, and the entire OST of Kimi No Na Wa. 

“Chicago?” Jaehyun asked, and oh no, he was pulling out his American accent on Johnny, drawing out the “ca”. That always made Johnny extra soft.

Jonny wanted to shrink, because he knew this playlist by heart, and he knew that Carly Rae’s “Warm Blood” was coming up next, and that that was his song for Jaehyun when he thought about Jaehyun practicing his singing in the bathroom most mornings.

Johnny cleared his throat. 

“Ah, yeah, it’s just a mess of a playlist, really,” he said, dangling his feet off the side of the top bunk, trying to act nonchalant while Carly Rae started singing, “I've got a cavern of secrets, none of them are for you,” like she was taunting him.

Johnny would have been annoyed at the intrusion of Jaehyun just scrolling through his phone like that, except that that’s what they always did with each other in the dorms anyway. Yuta’s playlists were a personal favourite, and Yuta never minded when Johnny did this. Jaehyun never minded when Johnny went through his playlists, either.

The thing that Johnny felt was _raw_ , because if Jaehyun only knew to look close enough, he’d have seen Johnny’s entire heart laid bare for him. But as it was, it was just a random listing of songs to Jaehyun, and so Johnny let himself relax a little bit.

“These songs are so sad, Johnny-hyung, is this how you feel about Chicago?” 

Leave it to Jaehyun to cut straight to a question like that, really. 

“Not really, sometimes I’m just emo,” Johnny replied, feigning nonchalance, trying to ignore the rippling bass of the chorus.

Jaehyun rolled his eyes at that, and instead sat in the cushy roller chair that Taeyong often sat at when he was playing on his laptop.

Johnny never expected to have the object of his affections sitting in his room, listening to the lovelorn playlist he had constructed, but such was his life.

“I didn’t know you listened to so much Carly Rae,” Jaehyun said, the smallest teasing tone noticeable in his voice. 

_Oh my god_ , Johnny thought. _Not this song._

__

__

‘Your Type’ had just started, and he was really on the verge of jumping off the bed to hit pause.

There Miss Carly Rae was, singing, “And I want you to miss me when I’m not around you, I know that you’re in town, why won't you come around to the spot that we met,” as if Johnny hadn’t listened to that song on loop daydreaming about kissing the boy sitting in his room.

“We spend so much time around Kpop, sometimes I just like listening to… you know, Western pop,” Johnny rationed, hoping that Jaehyun would miss the general theme of longing and heartache that the playlist held if he started talking about music. 

Jaehyun was jamming to the synth of the song and fiddling with his phone as Johnny gracefully climbed down from his bed, making to move to shift playlists, when Jaehyun started singing along to the chorus, looking up at Johnny while glancing at his phone where the lyrics were pulled up. 

“I’m not the type of girl for you, I’m not going to pretend that I’m the type of girl you call more than a friend, and I break all the rules for you, break my heart and start again--” he sang when the chorus came around again, before breaking off to say, “This is a pretty good song, hyung. Kinda still sad though, even if the beat isn’t.”

Johnny swallowed through it, hands clammy at hearing Jaehyun’s smooth voice seamlessly blend in with Carly Rae Jepsen’s. He wanted to punch something. 

“Yeah, she’s pretty cool,” Johnny replied, finally switching playlists to something a little less “I’m in love with you, Jaehyun,” and more “let’s listen to this band whose lyrics are in English but incoherent nonetheless”. 

Johnny was trying to find a song to settle on to wash the taste of pining from his mouth when Jaehyun, who was still scrolling through his phone, suddenly asked, “Who is she?”

Johnny was baffled, and so he turned to raise an eyebrow at the younger man sitting on his roommate’s chair. 

“The girl you’re crying over?”

Johnny dropped his phone. 

The resounding smack was not promising. 

Neither was the crack across the back of it. 

“Ah, shit, I broke it,” Johnny said, in lieu of answering Jaehyun, who was eyeing Johnny’s phone in dismay. 

“I’ve told you like a hundred times to get a case for that thing,” Jaehyun said, rising up with his hand out to check Johnny’s phone. 

That was the end of that conversation, at least for the time being. 

-

It was jarring how Jaehyun didn’t seem to let it go after that. He kept catching Johnny at inopportune times trying to weasel a name, or anything really, out of him, but he was somehow not annoying about it. 

“Is she someone we know? Someone we’ve worked with?” Jaehyun asked once while they were at the gym, and Johnny had had to think double time to follow what the train of thought had been, nearly dropping the dumbell on his foot.

“Ah, uh, no?” Johnny had replied, and Jaehyun had dropped it then. 

There was an afternoon where they were on the way home from a meeting with the higher ups about their tour when Jaehyun had asked Johnny, “Are you feeling better?”

And Jonny had been so baffled because he couldn’t remember for the life of him not being “good” in the recent week, until Jaehyun added, “are you still sad over her?” 

And Johnny wanted to shake his best friend by the shoulders then, because goddammit, Jaehyun didn’t even sound like he was prying, not to him. Jaehyun sounded like the kind of friend who genuinely cared about your well-being after catching you crying to songs that sounded like they were full to the brim with longing and unrequited love. Given, it wasn’t Johnny’s style to keep bringing things up like that, but Johnny also knows that it might be smarting to Jaehyun that since they’ve met, there have never been secrets between them besides the one that Johnny has been keeping from him this entire time— the biggest one, the one that would blow everything out of the water. 

Then one day Jaehyun asked Johnny if he could send him the link to his Chicago playlist, and Johnny panicked. It felt too much, too personal, and his hesitation must have shown on his face because Jaehyun had tacked on a hasty, “Er, unless you don’t want to, it’s okay! It’s cool, I’m really sorry I asked.” 

And that’s the thing that kept Johnny awake. Jaehyun really did sound like he was sorry. 

And after that, Jaehyun stopped asking about the mystery girl. 

So it should have been fine, right? 

Things were peachy, and Jaehyun and Johnny were okay again, and the Chicago playlist and the secret girl were forgotten, never mentioned again. 

That is, until Johnny walked past Jaehyun’s room one night, and heard music playing from inside, and it was Carly Rae, and Jaehyun was singing along to ‘Run Away with Me’. 

Johnny told himself not to make a big deal about it, since Jaehyun had expressed interest in her when he had heard her on Johnny’s playlist the other month. 

But this was different somehow. 

Johnny had spent so many evenings imagining this video montage in his head of capturing Jaehyun on film, travelling with him, Jaehyun laughing into the camera, a shot of their hands as they ran through every city. 

Johnny had imagined it so many times that sometimes he would go through his gallery to find the video only to realise that it wasn’t a real reel. It was all in his head. 

See, this was the problem with falling in love with your straight best friend: it only ended in tears and sad, sappy what-ifs in your head. 

So there Johnny stood, his forehead resting on Jaehyun’s door, listening to Jaehyun singing “hold on to me, I never wanna let you go”, his hands clenched at his side.

After the song ended, Johnny willed himself to pull away, and left. 

-

Johnny thought he had gotten a grip on himself and his feelings for Jaehyun well enough to keep functioning for the next couple of weeks, and for the most part it was true. 

Except that for some reason, every new song he added to his secret playlist just kept getting sadder and sadder, and he didn’t know if he was gonna be able to keep things up anymore, so one day, after listening to Jeff Buckley on repeat for three hours, he decided to tell himself that he needed to really legitimately get over Jaehyun. 

He told himself that he could keep loving Jaehyun, he just needed to get over wanting to use the term “boyfriend” in relation to him. 

He just needed to stop thinking about what it would feel like to have his hand linger on Jaehyun’s neck for longer than a second.

He just needed to stop wanting to kiss the corner of Jaehyun’s lips whenever a smile was directed at Johnny. 

He just needed to stop wanting to reach for Jaehyun’s hand every time it was just there on the table for the taking. 

It sounded really easy in his head, and Jonny told himself that he was pretty good at achieving the things he wanted if he really put his mind to it. So that’s what he focused on. 

As the days went by and they got busier, living life in transit from airport to airport, Johnny started to pull himself away a little bit more. 

_I’m doing this for my sanity_ , he told himself. 

Johnny would request specific room and seating arrangements that meant either isolating himself or making sure that someone else was around so that he didn’t have to be alone with Jaehyun. 

He stopped going to the gym alone with his best friend. He joked around less and less, because Jaehyun’s laughter was devastating to him, and his smile left Johnny in shambles.

Did it hurt? Yeah, it fucking hurt. But then Johnny, who had started secretly writing his own music to try to get his feelings out of his system somehow, figured that no longer imagining what Jaehyun smelled like if they cuddled meant progress, so he was gonna take it as a win. 

He thought he was doing a pretty okay job at not being too blatantly obvious that he was avoiding Jaehyun, but then one night while Johnny was sitting outside with his journal in hand and Jose Gonzales playing through his headphones, he felt a tap on his shoulder and had to snap his journal shut because Jaehyun was looking at him with his hands wrung in front of him. He pulled his headphones off to rest on his neck.

“Johnny-hyung, can I talk to you?” 

Johnny felt lead drop in his stomach, and he swallowed around the lump in his throat. Jaehyun looked so worried, so Johnny was instantly petrified. 

He cleared his throat, tucked his Lamy into his front pocket, and said, “Yeah, of course!” with his voice pitched too high, tossing his headphones off onto the grass behind him, forgetting to hit pause.

Jaehyun took a seat next to him, and Johnny had to look away from his profile. Just being beside the younger man felt like taking three hundred steps back in whatever progress he thought he had made. 

‘Edge of Desire’ was playing through the tinny sounds on Johnny’s headphones, audible albeit muted. 

“Hyung, have I done something wrong?” 

Jaehyun wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at his shoes. 

Johnny was looking straight ahead, afraid that this was what Jaehyun had come outside to talk about. 

For a second, Johnny spared a thought, realising that Jaehyun had probably picked up on his behaviour much earlier than he assumed, but had waited until breaking point before deciding to talk to Johnny. Jaehyun really was much more the ‘let’s talk it out immediately’ kind of problem-solver. 

Johnny’s wracked with guilt almost immediately. 

“Uh, no, why, what’s wrong?” Johnny was lying through his teeth. He knew that. He knew that Jaehyun knew that. 

Jaehyun exhaled. 

“You’ve been avoiding me, and I wanted to know what I did wrong so that I could fix things,” Jaehyun said. He was looking at Johnny now, and it was making Johnny’s insides catch fire. 

So there wasn’t exactly a way around this, not when Jaehyun was looking at him with this sort of defiant kind of hurt in his eyes. 

Johnny ran through the scenarios in his head. 

He could say that he was generally avoiding everyone, just tired from their life on the road, more engrossed in his writing, even if he knew that SM would never, ever even consider using any of his music for anything. 

He could say that Jaehyun was imagining things, but gaslighting him wasn’t something Johnny ever wanted to do. Jaehyun was clearly hurting because of him, and that was making Johnny want to hurl on the ground between his sneakers because he hadn’t meant for Jaehyun to feel that. Not at all. 

He could pretend that he was hurting over a mystery girl and leave it at that. It would have been plausible, since Jaehyun had already made assumptions about his sexuality anyway. 

But somehow, Johnny felt like this was it, the one chance to get everything on the table and finally let go of Jaehyun properly. 

_If he’s really your best friend_ , said the voice in his head that sounded sort of like his mother, _then he won’t have a problem with it, and he won’t be weird about it._

So Johnny went with that. 

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Jaehyunnie,” Johnny said, and here it was. He was gonna say it and get his heart broken and then he’d finally be able to rebuild from there. “Please believe me when I say that.”

“Then why don’t you talk to me anymore?” 

Jaehyun looked small, huddled in his too-big coat and his sweater paws. 

Johnny stared at a spot of dirt on the white of his Chuck Taylors. 

“Jaehyunnie, I’m gonna tell you something, but I need you to believe me when I say that I don’t expect anything in return, and that I really hope you don’t end up avoiding _me_ after this,” Johnny said. 

Jaehyun had his body turned to Johnny, mouth open in a little ‘o’, before belatedly deciding to shut it and nod. 

“Jae, I’m not straight. I mean, I guess I identify as bisexual, but I’ve never really talked about that much because it’s something that’s never actually come up— wait, I’m lying again. It’s never come up because I’ve never _brought_ it up. It’s not exactly something we talk about much here,” Johnny said, eyes still fixed on the spot on his shoe. 

“Part of why I’ve never talked about it because there’s a secret I’ve been keeping from you, specifically, for a while now. It feels like such a rookie move, falling in love with your straight best friend, but I guess that’s why it’s such a common trope when people write stories about LGBT kids and coming of age and all.” 

Jaehyun’s breathing was measured, like he was trying to make sure he wasn’t hyperventilating. 

“So, I’ve been avoiding you because I knew that two and a half years was too long to be carrying around a torch for you, and I needed to get over it,” Johnny finished in a whisper. “Over you.” 

Johnny’s heart was beating a mile a minute, afraid that this was where Jaehyun was going to bid a hasty farewell, an awkward, “uh, I gotta go,” or something. 

What Johnny hadn’t expected was—

“I’m sorry.” 

Johnny closed his eyes, letting out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. He didn’t want an apology, but then again, he didn’t know what he was expecting. 

“Jae, like I said, I don’t want anything, I just need to get over you,” Johnny said. “You make it really hard though.”

Jaehyun snorted, and Johnny shoved him with his shoulder. 

“Shut up,” Johnny said, whining now. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. It really hard to not love you.” 

Jaehyun was smiling, but it was a sad little thing. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you, Jae. I don’t like doing it, but I can’t keep having to keep my hands to myself around you, so being away from you makes it a bit easier. Wait, that makes me sound creepy—“

“Just a little,” Jaehyun laughed, switching to English and making Johnny’s chest constrict. 

They’re quiet for a while, the evening breeze blowing through the bamboo behind them. 

“I miss you, though,” Jaehyun said. “I’ve been missing you a while. I really thought I fucked up. I kept trying to go over what it was that I could have done to get you mad enough to avoid me, and all I could think was that I went through your playlist and kept asking about some girl.” 

Johnny kept his mouth shut, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Wait— you were— the playlist,” Jaehyun stuttered. “You were crying— you were crying over me?” 

There it was. 

“That entire playlist is about you,” Johnny replied, looking at Jaehyun, watching the pieces fall into place on his face, plain as day. “So you can understand why I didn’t want you to listen to the entire thing.”

Jaehyun huffed out a breath. 

“Yeah, I get that now.” 

Johnny didn’t know what to do now that his secret was out, but it did feel like a massive load off of his shoulders, and Jaehyun hadn’t walked away from him yet, so Johnny was counting that as a win. 

“Where do we go from here, Johnny-hyung?” 

”I… I still need time to get over all of this,” Johnny gesticulated around him, and in Jaehyun’s general direction. “But I’ll stop avoiding you. I just need time, is that okay?” 

Jaehyun nodded, gaze shifting from Johnny’s profile back to his feet. 

“Okay, that’s fair. That’s… yeah, that’s okay,” Jaehyun replied, voice still much smaller than Johnny was comfortable with. 

“What’s wrong, Jaehyunnie?” Johnny asked. 

“I feel like, I feel bad, that I don’t feel the same way,” Jaehyun said. “I mean, I do love you, hyung, but I’ve never actually thought about— well, liking boys before. I know that objectively you’re really handsome, and I have a lot of fun when I’m around you, but I’ve never thought of doing things like kissing you or holding your hand, and I somehow feel like I’ve… let you down?”

Johnny wanted to hold him, or run away, he wasn’t really sure. Fuck, this wasn’t a scenario he had run through. 

“No, no, oh my God, please, you don’t owe me anything, Jaehyun, you haven’t let me down,” Johnny said, panicking slightly. “I know you’re straight, I never expected you to reciprocate, and the last thing I want is for you to force yourself to feel anything out of— guilt or pity or anything. I don’t want that. I don’t want that for myself and especially not for you.”

Jaehyun gave him a watery smile, and moved closer to rest his head on Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny closed his eyes. 

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it,” Jaehyun replied. He realised the move he had made, and his head shot up immediately, like Johnny had burned him. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— I’m sorry, I don’t want to make this difficult for y—“

“Jae, please, can we not be weird about that?” Johnny asked, his voice pained. He wanted so much to take things back, worried that Jaehyun was going to keep being awkward around him now that he knew. “I’m not made of glass, you know.”

“I know, Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun replied. “I just don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to resent me. Does that make me selfish?” 

Johnny smiled at him, trying to be reassuring. 

“Jaehyunnie, nothing you could do would make me resent you,” Johnny replied. _Wow_ , Johnny thought. _That was pretty gay._

What was the protocol here? Johnny tried to think about all of the stories that he’d read, the movies he’d seen. 

Unfortunately, none of those involved having to live and work with the object of your affection 24/7. 

Jaehyun exhaled, and said, “We’ll figure this out, hyung. But please, if it doesn’t hurt you too much, I hope that you know you can still talk to me. I meant it when I said I’ve missed you.” 

He stood to go back into the apartment, but turned to Johnny at the last second. 

“Do you— I know this might be kind of a dick move for me to ask but, do you think you’d be willing to let me listen to the playlist anyway?” 

Jaehyun’s expression was unreadable, and Johnny couldn’t parse why Jaehyun would want to hear it despite knowing what he knew about it now, but he pulled his phone out, still with the crack across the back, and sent him the link.

Jaehyun’s phone pinged, and the dimple that appeared on his face as he said thank you was Johnny’s demise. 

-

Johnny stopped avoiding Jaehyun outright, but he still preferred to not be alone with him, which Jaehyun had picked up on fairly quickly. Johnny was grateful that Jaehyun understood enough to know that it was difficult to be in such close proximity to him, but it still made Johnny’s skin itch, because it made him feel immature, like he was seven and harboring a crush on Ella Printz from 8th grade. It also made him feel a little bit like Edward when he was avoiding Bella because of how she smelled to him, so when Johnny realized that he was making awful Twilight comparisons of him and Jaehyun in his head, Johnny knew he had to change tactics. 

It turned out to be a little simpler than he thought it would be. 

When Taeyong and Jungwoo had invited Johnny and Jaehyun out for a convenience store run, Johnny had decided to tag along, and try to catch Jaehyun alone as they were walking. 

Jaehyun had his hands stuffed down the pockets of his joggers, the only thing between him and the cold. He turned a tiny smile on Johnny when Johnny had fallen into step with him. 

“How are you?” Johnny asked, mirroring Jaehyun’s posture, shoving his hands into his own pockets. 

“I’m good, hyung,” Jaehyun replied. “How about you? Still in love with me?” He laughed a little, nudging Johnny’s arm with his shoulder.

Johnny rolled his eyes and let out a “Tch”, and said, “Ugh, unfortunately.” 

Jaehyun’s responding guffaw still felt like a sucker punch to the gut, but at least Johnny wasn’t in pain anymore. It was just kind of dull, like the echo of a remembered agony. 

There were a couple of beats of silence. 

“I’ve been listening to your playlist all month,” Jaehyun said. Johnny felt his hands clam up in his pockets. He kept his voice steady. 

“Yeah? Look, you can tell me it’s pathetic, I know it’s pathetic,” Johnny said, ignoring how his heart had began to thud audibly against his ribcage. 

Jaehyun didn’t respond immediately. He appeared thoughtful, and he cast a look off into the distance. 

He began to hum, and Johnny realized that it was Jessie Ware’s ‘Say You Love Me’. 

“Cos I don’t want to fall in love,” Jaehyun sang under his breath. “If you don’t want to try.”

Johnny kept his mouth shut, completely at loss as to why Jaehyun was singing this song is particular. 

He couldn’t help the hurt that speared through him. 

This was the last song he had added to the playlist before he had given the link to Jaehyun. It was also the last song that he had added before he stopped building the playlist altogether. 

Jaehyun was still singing, and Johnny wanted nothing more than to tell him to stop. Any song but this one. 

“You listened to this song and thought of me,” said Jaehyun, turning to look at Johnny. 

It wasn’t a question, but Johnny nodded anyway. Johnny had his hands in fists, willing himself not to cry, or feel like his feelings were being toyed with. 

“I’ve had a lot of time to think lately,” Jaehyun said as they rounded the corner. Taeyong and Jungwoo had gone into the store ahead, leaving Johnny and Jaehyun to hang back by the tree outside the little convenience shop. 

“Hmm, what about?” Johnny asked. 

“You, mostly.” 

Johnny’s head snapped up, and he tried to read what Jaehyun was thinking, what he was saying. 

“And?” 

Johnny watched Jaehyun’s smile happen in a series of milliseconds in slow-mo— the beginning of a dimple, the stretch of vermillion into blinding white, the crinkle of the corners of his eyes until they disappeared behind his eyelids and his eyelashes. 

“Well,” Jaehyun began, his eyes shining in the streetlights. 

Hope bloomed in Johnny’s chest.


End file.
